New Directions in Childhood Studies: Innocence, Trauma, and Agency in the Twenty-first Century acknowledges that the conceptual frameworks for understanding the experience of childhood in the twentieth century are no longer adequate and offers important updates to the construct of American childhood. The chapters in this collection examine contemporary children’s literature, film, and video games to explore the ways in which everyday realities like trauma, disaster, and death impa...

Social Order and Authority in Disney and Pixar Films contributes to an essential, ongoing conversation about how power dynamics are questioned, reinforced, and disrupted in the stories Disney tells. Whether these films challenge or perpetuate traditional structures (or do both), their considerable influence warrants careful examination. This collection addresses the vast reach of the Disneyverse, contextualizing its films within larger conversations about power relations. The depictions of...

This collection examines the child’s role in contemporary post-apocalyptic films and television.. By exploring the function of child characters within a dystopian framework, this volume illustrates how traditional notions of childhood are tethered to sites of adult conflict and disaster, a connection that often works to reaffirm the “rightness” of past systems of social order.